Learn English – In the old name Dreadnought, is nought an adverb or a noun

archaicismsetymologymeaning

The name Dreadnought, a class of naval ship, originates from the eponymous HMS Dreadnought. Wikipedia indicates that

Dreadnought's name, and the class of battleships named after her,
means "a fearless person"

Its reference for this is

'Dreadnought' in Google Dictionary and Merriam-Webster dictionaries

However, when I google "Dreadnought", Google's dictionary tells me

noun: dreadnought; plural noun: dreadnoughts

  1. (historical) a type of battleship introduced in the early 20th century, larger and faster than its predecessors and equipped entirely with large-caliber guns.

  2. (archaic) a heavy overcoat for stormy weather.

Similarly, Merriam-Webster tells me

dreadnought, noun

1 : a warm garment of thick cloth also : the cloth

2 [ Dreadnought, British battleship ] a : battleship

b : one that is among the largest or most powerful of its kind

It seems to me that the word is composed of two somewhat archaic words, dread and nought. I believe that in this usage, dread means fear, and nought is one variant spelling of the noun naught, meaning nothing. So one might "update" the word to fears-nothing.

However I wonder if that's correct — naught, nought, and not are all homophones, and historically, English spelling hasn't been exactly standardized. The term could be "updated" as Does not fear, from the more archaic Fears not, where not is the adverb.

Which is a more modern form of the word Dreadnought? What more accurately represents the original meaning? Fears-nothing, that the ship fears no other ship in the water? Or Does not fear, that the ship does not fear any other ship?

Best Answer

As you surmise, dreadnought originates as a compound of dread and nought, and nought is a noun, so the original meaning was something like shies from nothing. But if you will forgive the use of that most tiresome favorite adverb of pretentious Internet commenters, actually, the first English Dreadnought was a Third Rate galleon commissioned during the reign of Elizabeth I, built in 1573.

Dread is relatively straightforward, meaning to fear, shrink from, be reverent of, and similar senses of having apprehension, from Middle English onwards.

Not (sometimes nocht or noht in older works) is an etymological descendent of nought, but by the time dreadnought appears, it was already a distinct word, and dreadnought is not simply a fanciful spelling of dread-not.

As for naught and nought, the OED draws a distinction between the two as their spellings represented distinct pronunciations until the 17th century or so. They are at least fraternal twins, however:

From the Old English period onwards there is no clear distinction in meaning or function between the two words. (naught adj. is attested considerably earlier than the adjectival uses below, but it is unclear whether this is simply an accident of the historical record, or reflects a real distinction in use.) Usage of one word or the other in any given sense varies relatively freely (and sometimes differs between editions of the same work) down to the 20th cent., although some patterns have been enforced by printers and dictionaries. In early modern English the adjectival senses ‘worthless’, ‘bad’, ‘immoral’ were especially associated with naught (compare naughty adj.), although the use of nought was not uncommon.…

In northern dialects nought generally preserved Middle English -o- ; the vowel of the form nowt… generally has the same sound as that of grow, flown, and other words which had a diphthong /ɔu/ in Middle English.

We no longer use nought in the sense it is used in dreadnought, either. According to the OED, it is a count noun for something which does not exist, a use which is marked obsolete and not attested after a 1642 Henry More ode:

Bringing hid Noughts into existencie, Or sleeping Somethings into wide day-light.

That said, dreadnought began to be used as an adjective in later years meaning without fear:

God is our hope, God is our reuenge, & God is dread naught indeede. (1592, William Burton in Dauids Euidenece)

For this, we have no shortage of synonyms, any number of which the Royal Navy has adopted in turn: fearless, dauntless, intrepid, gallant, undaunted, brave, valiant, and so on. (They never learned what the U.S. Navy learned, that abstract qualities do not have legislators and voters who will vote money to build ships named after them).

I would add that the cloth known as dreadnought was contemporaneously known as fearnought, and in fact the earliest OED entry for fearnought predates dreadnought by more than two decades.

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